The government will keep us all updated on COVID-19 restrictions and relaxations over the next few days and weeks. So you and your company may be looking at plans on how to facilitate a return to work operations.
We all want to return to some form of normality, but as business owners, we cannot ignore our legal health and safety obligations. Safety PAL (PLAN ACT LEARN) wants to help you with more efficient and effective business decisions, getting you safely down the road to recovery. It is important to take the most effective route in delivering frontline health, safety and wellbeing as the law requires to ultimately avoid future prosecution, civil claims or long term employee absences.
Understanding your health and safety obligations?
Your health and safety legal obligations start in Section 2 and 3 of The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and this piece of legislation has not changed since the pandemic! – To ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all employees:
• Section 2 is specific to the general duties of employers to their employees.• Section 3 is specific to the general duties of employers and self-employed to persons other than their employees.
If you are a company director, you need to understand that health and safety law places duties on organisations and employers, and you can be personally liable when duties are breached. So you must choose the correct road to recovery ensuring you are delivering (and with proof) the health, safety and welfare to all your employees, contractors and others affected by your work activities.
More specifically than Section 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 is the requirement in Regulation 3 of The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of his employees and a person, not in his employment affected by your operations. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 Regulation 6 is all about workers health surveillance. In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, you need to take a proportionate approach and potentially to increase the health/medical surveillance to all your employees – it’s the law.
There are also criminal law requirements under the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations. It is important to understand to first take steps to manage risk without resorting to personal protective equipment (PPE) or Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE). The obligations state that PPE an RPE must be appropriate for the risks and conditions involved, capable of fitting correctly and must be assessed as suitable and effective, so far as is reasonably practicable, to prevent or adequately control the risk. Undertaking workers PPE and RPE assessments would be essential in ensuring you are providing adequate information, instruction, training and maintenance thereof.
RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 puts duties on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises (the Responsible Person) to report certain serious workplace accidents, occupational diseases and specified dangerous occurrences (near misses).
Follow the HSE and PHE industry-specific guidance to manage the workplace environment and consideration must be given to the individual circumstances when they arise for a decision on whether to complete an online RIDDOR report.
Important information on offences
Step one of the ‘Health and Safety Offences, Corporate Manslaughter and Food Safety and Hygiene Offences, Definitive Guideline’ details the fact that health and safety offences are concerned with failures to manage risks to health and safety and do not require proof that the offence caused any actual harm. The offence is in creating a risk of harm.
Staying on the right side of the criminal law
The above sections of legislation highlight the need to take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure the health safety and welfare of your workers and anyone else affected by your operations. This includes keeping up to date with work-related risks posed by COVID-19 and putting in place suitable and sufficient control measures to get you back on the road to recovery during this pandemic.
It is important to keep abreast of the latest developments on COVID-19 understanding the change in circumstances and knowledge, as these risks are changing fast, and your risk assessments, control measures, audits and standards will need to be regularly reviewed and amended to suit – Ensuring you are staying on the right side of the law.
What do I have to do to get workers back to work safely, protecting my business and me?
Health and Safety can in normal times be a struggle, a burden and almost always reactive, so we did not just want to provide extracts and phrases from legislation and associated government departments as many others will over the next few days/weeks – Telling you what you should do. Here at Safety PAL we wanted to help you to do it, deliver it and prove it. Deliver effective and efficient health and safety directly to the frontline as required by health and safety legislation, preventing harm and protecting you and your company from prosecution and future compensation claims.
To comply with H&S criminal law (protecting employees and other who may be affected by work activities) it will be necessary to update your processes, systems, policies and procedures to include the hazards, risk and control measures, which have developed from COVID-19. You have a legal requirement to create relevant risk assessments dealing with this new pandemic and the return to work of employees who have never dealt with anything like this outbreak ever. Your risk assessment and other supporting policies must identify the hazards and set out suitable and sufficient, so far as is reasonably practicable mitigation measures.
Download our ‘The road to recovery H&S hints and tips’ here.
Can you risk health and safety criminal laws?
The HSE in a recent news bulletin‘Regulating occupational health and safety during the coronavirus outbreak” said, “Despite the demanding circumstances, compliance with occupational health and safety legal requirements remains with duty holders and HSE will continue its regulatory oversight of how duty holders are meeting their responsibilities in the context of the current public health risk and based on our available regulatory capacity.”This will still include FFI (Fees For intervention £154 per hour), improvement notices, prohibition notices and even criminal conviction.
Ignorance is not bliss its ignorance
You may feel this is simply another problem to deal with and even tempted to assume that due to all employers having to deal with this pandemic, social isolating, segregation and changes in occupational health and safety, the chance of facing a breach of health and safety legislation is extremely low. Hope should not be a tactic and the real fears and anxieties of many of your workers may be experiencing, could promote workers to report omissions of safety and health.
If you are experiencing difficulties of any kind, contact the HSE or your local authority, they will help.
We are also helping companies and business owners to ensure they are doing so far as is reasonably practicable.
We look forward to helping you in the best way to stay safe and compliant with legislation, and leave the closing ‘Road to Recovery’ statement to one of our customers.
“There has never been a better time to use the services of Safety PAL to sign in and out of the project due to COVID19..”
Abiola Lasekan MSC. CMIOSH, PIEMASiemens Mobility Limited
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